From Idea to Testnet in 10 Weeks: What We Learned from Codebase Cohort 2

In late December, Ava Labs’ Codebase program hosted a Demo Day featuring projects from 5 teams that participated in the incubator’s second cohort. 

The success of these teams, who went from idea to testnet in just 10 weeks, also underscored several key learnings from the second iteration of the program such as the importance of making decisive pivots, storytelling, understanding the unique benefits of the Avalanche ecosystem, and the support of a deep advisor network to help with all aspects of company building.

Decisiveness is Key

When Kparobo Abala and Agbona Igwemoh joined Codebase as one of 5 startups in the program’s second cohort, they thought they had their startup idea figured out. But less than one month after joining the incubator they had completely pivoted to building a new product—Chiss Protocol—that was ultimately selected as one of the three winning projects during the Codebase Demo Day in December.

The decision to make a product pivot is typically among the hardest that early stage founders ever have to make. It’s no secret that most product pivots fail, which leads many founders to delay the decision or pursue hail-mary efforts to save the original idea rather than adjusting course. But the reality is that pivots don’t typically fail because the new idea isn’t viable. They fail because the founders didn’t take decisive action. 

In most startup incubators, “pivot” is a dirty word that suggests a lack of founder conviction or ability to execute on an original idea. Founders are expected to come equipped with a well-developed idea, technical roadmap, and go-to-market strategy—the rest is pure execution. But for Michael Martin, who directs the Codebase program at Ava Labs, pivots aren’t verboten—if anything, they’re encouraged. 

“One of the top takeaways from Codebase’s second cohort is that it is important for founders to have a scalable idea, access to customers, and a go-to-market strategy, but more than anything success in this program is about being decisive,” he says. 

This requires more than making founders feel comfortable with experimenting and exploring new ideas. Any founder can pivot, but making that pivot successful requires support from a network of mentors and advisors that can help crystalize and validate new ideas. For founders building on Avalanche, that often means providing founders with access to Ava Labs’ technical expertise, network, and tooling to support the development of their product. But building a great startup requires more than a technically excellent product and with Codebase’s second cohort Ava Labs doubled down on support in all areas beyond the command line. 

The Avalanche Effect 

During Codebase’s 10-week intensive program, founders are provided with a variety of support mechanisms that allow them to go from idea to live testnet demo in under three months. There are twice-a-week sessions with Ava Labs staff and advisors that provide founders with a masterclass in all areas of company building that Martin refers to as an “Web3 MBA.” But unlike business school, this curriculum isn’t set in stone. 

One of the workshops offered by Codebase as part of the incubator program is focused on executive and product storytelling, which is an essential skill for founders who are developing their product on Avalanche. It’s a technical system that may be unfamiliar to the founders’ potential customers or future investors, which means they need to be able to clearly and simply explain how it creates differentiated value for the end user. If the founder can’t clear that bar, it won’t matter if they’ve built a great product that meets a critical customer need because no one will buy it. “Who cares about your idea if you don't know how to communicate it?" says Martin. "No one will care unless you can find a way to tell them otherwise."

Prioritizing Storytelling

Storytelling workshops have, as a result, always been an integral part of the Codebase program. But one of the major pieces of feedback from founders in the first cohort was that they wanted more access to storytelling support, which was only offered during the final weeks of the program. So for Cohort 2, Codebase launched storytelling workshops for founders during the first week of the program so they could hone this skill in preparation for Demo Day, where storytelling is paramount. 

Storytelling is just one support lever founders can pull during their time in the incubator. By participating in the Codebase program, they are also able to access a broad network of Ava Labs’ advisors that include operators, founders, investors, and commercial partners. Founders essentially have an entire consultancy at their disposal and for Martin, one of the biggest insights from Cohort 2 was the tremendous value that this ecosystem approach unlocked for builders.

“Founders are able to access all these tools, resources, and people because the Codebase program is embedded in Ava Labs,” he says. “We have an immense amount of institutional knowledge that is always just a Telegram message away.” 

Although founders are expected to have a basic understanding of Avalanche’s consensus mechanisms and the general thesis behind Avalanche9000 when they apply to Codebase, they don’t need to have deep experience actually developing dApps on Avalanche. For that, they can rely on the technical expertise and tooling developed over the past eight years at Ava Labs. Codebase founders have privileged access to the Ava Labs team and key vendors within the Avalanche ecosystem such as AvaCloud that will help them rapidly gain the technical skills they need to build their product. 

For Martin, Cohort 2 underscored that deep technical experience building on Avalanche is equally as important as a solid understanding of the unique benefits of building on Avalanche compared to other L1 chains. “We truly are an ecosystem of interoperable blockchains rather than a collection of companies building on a chain,” he says. “That fundamental shift enables new business models and having that knowledge can unlock partnerships and go-to-market strategies much more quickly.” 

The Right Founders, the Right Problems, and the Right Network

Codebase’s second cohort consisted of 15 teams from around the world with diverse backgrounds and product ideas. Some teams consisted primarily of college students building a startup for the first time while others consisted of more seasoned entrepreneurs and Web3 builders. The cohort brought a broad range of product ideas to Codebase that included everything from B2B SaaS and loyalty marketplaces for food and beverage to decentralized AI and stablecoin platforms. 

Although the founders and products in Cohort 2 were eclectic, they all had important elements in common that helped crystalize the elements of a strong application to the Codebase program. First and foremost, all of the Cohort 2 teams were able to clearly articulate why their idea needed to be on Avalanche’s blockchain, which meant understanding the unique business models, go-to-market strategies, or product features that are unlocked by its ecosystem. 

Another important characteristic of all the Cohort 2 members was the strength of their team and the relationships between team members. Strong interpersonal relationships on each team helped mitigate founder drama that can unravel even the best startup idea and each startup was composed of team members with unique and mutually reinforcing skill sets that increase their odds of successfully developing a product. 

But perhaps most importantly was the team’s relationship with potential customers. Too often, says Martin, founders don’t have a good sense of who, exactly, will be buying their product. They might have a general sense of the industry or type of company that would buy it, but can’t identify the person within that company who they’d be selling to. Even if they can identify the specific customer profile, it’s equally important that they have existing relationships with that type of person. 

“At this stage, it’s less about having a complete understanding of your customer than having a direct path to them,” says Martin. “Founders need to be able to talk to and interview the people who would be their potential customer. Otherwise, it’s not going to be a sustainable idea for a company because it will take six months for them to find the right contacts that might actually want to buy their product.” 

Sustainability is core to Codebase’s philosophy as a startup incubator. The program isn’t designed to simply support interesting ideas and getting founders to an MVP. It’s designed to help founders create an enduring business that solves real customer problems. A technically excellent product isn’t a viable business unless founders also have access to customers and the ability to clearly communicate its value. 

Codebase, like the startups in the program, is constantly iterating on its approach to supporting founders building on Avalanche. The feedback from founders is used to adapt the program in real-time to their needs and the lessons from Cohort 2 will be applied to continue to enhance the program for Cohort 3.

 “By the nature of our mandate we’re able to keep the program small,” says Martin. “This allows for constant feedback from our founders to make sure that Codebase works for them.”

The lessons from Codebase's second cohort highlight what it takes to build a successful Web3 startup in 2025. Founders need the courage to pivot decisively when their initial ideas aren't working, the ability to tell compelling stories about their products from day one, and direct access to their target customers. But perhaps most importantly, they need a support system that goes beyond technical guidance – one that provides comprehensive ecosystem resources while remaining nimble enough to adapt to founders' needs. As Cohort 3 prepares for launch, these insights will continue shaping how Ava Labs nurtures the next generation of builders on Avalanche.

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